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The Jade General
|rank_and_unit = |allegiance= }}The Jade General is the Primarch of the XVIIth Legion - the Warriors of Peace. This mysterious Primarch, whose natural name has been lost long ago, has devoted himself to studying Pariahs. Making war with a scholar's mind, the Jade General is an extremely dangerous, martial artist who slays his foes with only his hands and feet. His and his sons path has always been one of choosing the most logical choice to his strange mind, whether it be loyalty, traitorhood, or something else altogether. History Fenghao When the XVIIth Legion's Primarch landed upon the world of Fenghao, the various warring states had long been divided, each seeking to restore the old Tiu order of Ngao and Hlun. Landing in the state of Ying, the child was brought to the court and raised by the Chancellor Lu Shangfei. Shangfei fell from power amidst the internecine power plays of the Ying Court, leaving The General to flee the capital. According to the records compiled in the years afterwards, The General joined the wandering intellectual elite of the day and, while serving the Kingdom of Han, he meets a prince of Ying. Blocked from the upper echelons of power in most states by jealous ministers protecting their control, the General pins his fortunes on Prince Yiren. An odd choice, Yiren had been deemed sufficiently expendable to serve as hostage guaranteeing peace in the state of Kham. While theoretically in line for succession, Yiren's mother was a minor concubine of reigning King Anguo. Nonetheless, the primarch saw Yiren as an opportunity. Personally tutoring him, the primarch turned an obscure prince into a formidable polymath. Stories of Yiren's skill as an advisor to the king of Kham are many, though most have a distinctly folkloric feel. In any event, Yiren returned to the Ying capital, he brought his favored advisor with him. As Prince Yiren takes part in his father's campaigns, the primarch is ever by his side, earning the name The Jade General over the course as his many victories. In the gaps between campaigns, however, the General works behind the scenes to ensure that Yiren is the designated heir through means that this author will simply allow the reader to guess at. It will simply be noted that Yiren's father, King Anguo died soon after declaring Yiren his heir. When Yiren ascended to the throne, his ever victorious general was made the new Chancellor. The two lead Ying's conquest of the old Tiu domains until Yiren's death. It is worth noting that Yiren's death is one of the few natural ones in his line. Yiren's infant son Cheng comes to the throne and naturally the Jade General is Chancellor-Regent. Splitting his time between the distant front and the palace, the new monarch is assassinated shortly before coming of age by another faction in the royal house, seeking to put a royal uncle on the throne. Vowing revenge in the memory of his dead friend, the Jade General ruthlessly purges the ministerial factions and the royal house and assumes direct control, taking the throne as King Xuandi of Ying. However, members of the royal house fled to the surrounding states and, seeing the capital in turmoil, the newly conquered territories rise in revolt, making pacts with more distant realms. While the General was able to make much progress, his war stalls. It proves difficult because the other states are making use of renegade psykers so the General turns to what we now know to be Nulls. Many of these Nulls become his first Astartes. Though the so-called Central States were united under the General's guidance, the world was larger than these kingdoms. Many of the aristocrats from the Central States had fled rather than submit and, in cooperation with nomads and even the distant Empire of Tanchandrahar. In what happened next, one must, from our vantage point, suspect the hand of Chaos, for the aristocrats were soon united under a powerful psyker, Toboleg. Where precisely Toboleg was from is unknown, but what is clear is that Toboleg had access to arcane secrets hitherto unknown on Fenghao, not simply in the Central States, but in all countries under the sky. Court Sorcerers were a court staple all over Fenghao, but their powers were limited and knowledge limited. Toboleg, in contrast, clearly excercised a level of control and technique requiring an educational infrastructure simply beyond the bronze age society of Fenghao's various nascent civilizations. Toboleg went on the offensive, devastating the army sent to pacify the Dhavashtam oasis cities that had allied with Prince Liu Gan. Worse still, Toboleg began gathering and training psykers. The number of these witches was never particularly high given how rare the psyker gene is, but Toboleg also appears to have had psycho-reactive devices allowing ordinary mortals to channel some degree of empyrean might with horrific consequences. A tide of madness and death was thus unleashed that even the General's strategic brilliance and well drilled armies were unable to check. However, psykers had plagued Fenghao in the distant past and legends remained. A strange community of hermits known as the Hmobok was known which drew upon strange members of all societies. Once in a generation, these odd hermits would descend from their mountain refuges to scour the countryside for children with what we now understand to be the Null Gene. On rare occasions they would be employed as exorcists in the world below, but in general, these Hmobok were avoided. The General had disregarded both sorcerors and Hmobok as curiosities ultimately irrelevant to administering an empire, an oversight which cost him dearly. By the time the General was able to mobilize the Hmobok, the countryside was overrun by mutated beasts. Taking the Hmobok as an elite force, The General deployed them both as retinue to aid him and as a mobile force able to hunt down the sorcerors. Thus, it was that the General's campaign became a careful series of traps designed to draw out sorcerors and strike them down, while he devised chariot units with massive crossbows to hunt down the mutated beasts running rampant. In time, the tides turned and the General, accompanied by the Hmobok, personally slew Toboleg at Dramnavandesh. It was in time of reconstruction that followed that the Emperor came to Fenghao. After conquering his home world and reunification with the genetic sons of the XVIIth Legion, the Jade General was handed the reigns of command. Quickly, the General imposed martial philosophy and standards upon his newfound warriors, and renamed his Legion the 'Warriors of Peace'. Satisfied, the Emperor soon departed, to continue prosecuting the wars of the Great Crusade and overseeing the ever-expanding borders of His newly formed Imperium of Man. Studying various astrographic charts and ancient stellar maps, the Jade General renamed his adopted home world Fenghao, because when viewed from Terra, it was located in conjunction to the constellations of Feng and Hao. Personality With his brothers, the Jade General brooked no easy familiarity. Alexandros remarked that, "We try to bring him in, to give him a proper name for a brother. Yet even if he does not overtly resist, our efforts fail. To bestow a moniker on him is to take paint and brush to water." - Alexandros Darshan VonSalim, Primarch of the Halcyon Wardens Legion, commenting upon the nature of his brother, The Jade General Honed on the battlefields of Fenghao, the Jade General's mind set him apart even among his brothers. Unsentimental to the point of foregoing a name, many assumed he would be a distant commander, directing rather than leading his troops. However the Primarch swiftly dispelled this notion, viewing his own power as a weapon to be wielded like any other - with utmost precision. Combining an understanding of biology that few could equal with the breathtaking finesse of Fenghao martial arts, in battle he was a warrior of absolute composure, no matter the chaos around him. While adept with a wide variety of weapons, the General preferred to employ his astonishing martial arts ability - one might say unarmed, but such a word never truly applied to a Primarch. Often his foes were undone by their sheer bewilderment when they faced him. Few things were so incongruous in an age of volkites, plasma and grav-weaponry as a warrior who slew with fists and feet. He became a strange paradox, taciturn in person but inspirational on the battlefield. However, there existed a flaw in his composure; a distrust of psykers, fed by disasters he witnessed on Fenghao, that bordered on the obsessive. His efforts to combat their spread by engineering an increase in the number of pariahs were blunted first by opposition within the Imperium and then brought to a complete halt at the Vizenko Prosecution. Resentful and with his obsession undimmed, the Jade General seized on Icarion's offer of the freedom to continue his research. It was not without remorse that he ordered his sons to turn their guns upon their kin, but with cold clarity he deemed it necessary. Along with Kozja he made a point of taking the gene-seed of enemy Astartes where possible, and his ambitions began to curdle. Wargear *''The Equilibrium Plate'' - Favouring mobility over protection, the Equilibrium plate nonetheless was incredibly strong. The product of several months’ toil in the XVIth Legion's forges, it was a suit of artificer armour based on Crusade-pattern armour but vastly improved by the artificers. Its already sophisticated systems were further augmented with medicae devices fashioned by the Jade General himself. *''The Obsidian Fang'' - The finest example of Jin blade-crafting ever to exist, the Obsidian Fang was the sword favoured by the Jade General whenever he required such a weapon. As with all his weapons, it was optimised for lightning-quick attacks and economy rather than the heavy blades wielded by many of his brothers. Rumour dogged the blade, claiming that it employed technologies from the Age of Technology which allowed it to sap a foe’s strength. *''War and Peace'' - The product of many years’ refinement, these unique thunder gauntlets and boots contained archeotech disruptor-cells of rare potency, surpassing almost any full-sized power fist in sheer power. Coupled with the Primarch's native strength, speed and skill, they sealed the fates of uncounted foes. Category:J